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Getting An FTF

This page is all about getting an FTF!

What is an FTF? FTF is geocaching speak for First To Find. You earn an FTF if you are the first person to find and log a new geocache.

Since there are millions of geocaches around the world, and many new geocaches are being placed daily, odds are good that a new geocache will pop up near where you are sooner than you think and allow you the pleasure of chasing down and getting an FTF.

You may be bitten by the FTF bug early in your geocaching life, later on, or maybe getting an FTF doesn’t resonate with you. However, for many goecachers, finding an FTF takes their geocaching enjoyment to a whole new level. They may have hundreds or thousands of smileys (geocaching finds) and focusing on FTF’s now takes their geocaching game to a new and more interesting level.

We know folks that will travel for miles in the middle of the night to chase down a newly released geocache. Got to be FTF!!

Getting An FTF

There is something about opening up a geocache container and finding a new, unmarked log sheet – as can be seen in the photo below – just waiting for you to add your geocaching name and the date you found it. The blank log sheet means (unless it is a replacement log) that you are getting a First To Find for that geocache.

Finding An FTF

There are a number of ways that you can go about getting an FTF.

If you are a member of geocaching.com, you will get the weekly newsletter, and in it, find a listing of recently placed geocaches. It was via this method, and the fact that there are not huge numbers of geocachers around where we live, that enabled us to FTF the one shown above.

Unfortunately for those of us that don’t have email messages sent to our smart phones, those that do get notified of new geocaches as they are approved, sometimes days before the newsletter goes out to the rest of us geocachers.

If you have a smart phone that is capable of getting alerts, you can set up your account at geocaching.com to enable alerts to be sent to your phone.

Enter the parameters you wish, and if a new geocache falls within those parameters, bingo, you’re alerted. The all you have to do is down your coffee, hit the road, and get to the new geocache before the many other like-minded geocachers do. Good luck!

We grabbed another FTF! Found this one in August 2016, picking up the GC code to find it from the Geocaching.com newsletter.